Archives / 1994 Mystery Hunt
Credits
MIT IAP Mystery Hunt '94 was developed by Eric Albert, J-J Coté, Tom Izdikowsi, Bruce Leban, Roy Leban, Debby Levinson, Kelly Moutsos, Peg Primak, Julian West, and Rose White. It had a cyberpunk scenario, followed by a collection of puzzles, most without instructions or introductions.
Statistics
The hunt was 32 puzzles long, and involved crosswords, cryptograms, logic puzzles, and many other kinds of puzzles. The first puzzle of the hunt was noteworthy because it came out of The New York Times, Friday January 14 (the day the hunt started). Other unique puzzles involved a "cyberkey" which was a piece of metal with certain markings and holes on it -- the solution involved identifying the letter of the drill-bit which made each hole. The hunt had slightly less of an MIT theme than typical. It was also a bit shorter than normal, finishing sometime on Saturday afternoon.
The Hunt
Puzzle 0 (PDF of the crossword from The New York Times, January 14, 1994)
Archivist's note: Michael Keller writes saying that Puzzle 23 consisted of two subpuzzles previously published in his magazine (WGR, Issue 11, June 1992). Both puzzles can also be found on his website.